Midnight Atlanta stands out as a powerful historical crime novel that successfully intertwines the personal with the political. Its strengths lie in its rich character development, intricate plot, and poignant exploration of themes that remain relevant today. However, some readers may find the detailed historical context overwhelming if they are not familiar with the era. Overall, I highly recommend this book for those interested in historical fiction, crime novels, and stories that delve into social justice issues.

This was a well written and gripping novel but more than that, it was powerful. It laid bare the racism of the era, a time not that long ago, when even apparently reasonable men and women felt free to believe and say the most terrible things. Very impressive and I will be searching out the earlier books in the series.
Thank you to Netgalley and the author and publishers for an opportunity to read this.

It is 1956 and Tommy Smith has left the Atlanta police force and is now a reporter for the Atlanta Daily News, the only daily Black newspaper in America. One night, while working late, he falls asleep at his desk, and is wakened suddenly by the sound of gunshots. He follows the sound and finds the body of Arthur Bishop, editor of the paper.

Since only white police can investigate murder and Smith knows they will likely just look for the easiest, preferably Black suspect, he decides to investigate the murder himself and he quickly finds several possible motives - a recent article Bishop wrote that has angered many whites; a planned building development that has serious implications for the people of Darktown; and the fact that Bishop just returned from a trip to Montgomery where an ongoing bus boycott is underway led by a young minister from Atlanta named Martin Luther King Jr. As Smith digs deeper into each of these possibilities, he soon finds himself up against not only the white Atlanta police but the FBI and the Pinkertons who make it very clear that they will do whatever it takes to stop Smith’s investigation.

Midnight Atlanta is the third book in author Thomas Mullen’s brilliant Darktown series and, like the previous two books, he combines a well-written and compelling mystery with well-researched portrayal of the history of the time. A series not to be missed. Darktown is one of the best mystery series around and one of the few I know I will reread. I can't recommend it highly enough.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review</i>

Having read the first two of Thomas Mullen’s Darktown series, Midnight Atlanta was the eagerly awaited third book. For those first-time or standalone readers, this series is historic crime fiction about policing in Atlanta. The main characters are the first black police officers Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith. The editor of Atlanta's leading black newspaper is found dead in his office and the ever-present racial tensions are raised once again. Set in 1956, with historic figures as part of the backdrop, Mullen has once again uniquely blended crime, mystery and American history. A tremendous read with great characters and believable narrative, so a five-star not-to-be-missed saga. Interestingly, there is a bibliography included to assist those keen to learn more of the actual history. With many thanks to Little Brown Book Group UK publications and the author for an advanced copy of an uncorrected proof for review purposes.

In 1948, the city of Atlanta hired its first Black police officers. This event formed the background for Thomas Mullen’s first entry in this series, DARKTOWN. The officers are despised by the rest of the police department, many members of which belong to the Ku Klux Klan, and the Black officers are caught between an underserved and suspicious community and a police organization that resents their very existence. One of those members of the original crew, Tommy Smith, chafed against the artificial restrictions, overt racism, and lack of resources, and by 1956 has quit the force, taking on the job of crime reporter for the only African American daily newspaper in the nation, where he feels he has more opportunity to serve justice. But even the newspaper has to tread lightly in a segregated city, where it could be shut down at any moment if it covered the wrong stories.

One night, after falling asleep at his typewriter (aided by a bottle of bourbon) he’s woken by a sound he knows well from his service as a tank commander in the war and as a cop: a gunshot. Taking up a bat, his only defense, he creeps carefully upstairs, where he finds his boss bleeding from a chest wound. Before help can arrive, the assailant has escaped and Arthur Bishop has died. After first pinning the murder on Tommy, homicide detectives zero in on the dead publisher’s wife. But she has a curious alibi that can’t be used in court: the FBI had her under surveillance and she was nowhere near the crime scene, something they decline to share with the local police.

Tommy Smith doesn’t want to let an innocent woman take the fall, and he wants to know why someone wanted a Black newspaper publisher dead. Meanwhile, tensions are high in Atlanta as the state gears up to fight the Supreme Court ruling that mandates school desegregation and white politicians worry that the unrest fueling the bus boycott in Montgomery, led by the son of an influential local preacher. It’s all rich material for a writer who has made this fault line running through the history of Atlanta – and America –his beat.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this. A great read full of tensions and atmosphere. Well written and a good read. Enjoyed it a Iot.

I love this series of books about the African American Atlanta police force. They always have gripping storylines that keep you guessing whilst interwoven with the prejudices and deep injustices of the time. I hope the mooted TV series gets made as the novels deserve a wider audience. One of my favourite books of the year.

I really enjoyed this book so thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy. Set in a racially divided Atlanta a tenacious cop turned journalist seeks to find the killer of his boss, with a little help from his former police team. An interesting look into the culture of the time, set against the emergence of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Fiction entwines with history to bring about a riveting and enthralling crime novel.

Firstly, this book is the third in a series called Darktown, which I didn’t realise when I started. However, this can be read as a standalone.
Set in Atlanta in 1956, it focuses on the murder of Arthur Bishop, the editor of a leading black newspaper. One of his employees, Tommy Smith – an ex-cop, finds him dead in his office. After calling the police Tommy finds himself under suspicious, so he begins to investigate to clear his name. Change is beginning to happen in America, which is causing a lot of racial tension. The appointment of the first black police officers, Rev. Martin Luther King Jnr is becoming more known and schools are becoming desegregated .
What made this interesting was that it was told from different perspectives. Tommy, his ex-partner Lucius Boggs and Joe McInnis, the white Sergeant in an all-black precinct. There are many different threads throughout the story as the characters are caught between the FBI, communists, and racist police (and racist people in general, the way these different threads intertwine, connect, some leading to something bigger and some just happenstance, reminded me of James Ellroy or Raymond Chandlers books.
The book is well written and even with the different POVs it is easily followed and progresses at a decent pace. The writer has done a lot of research on the history and I think it shows. There isn’t a big ah ha moment, the story winds down, bringing everything together to a satisfying ending.
If you like Ellroy or Chandler books like I do, then I think you will enjoy this. I will be going back to read the first two as they go back to 1948, when the Atlanta Police department hire their first black police officers, two of which are Tommy Smith and Lucius Boggs.

Thank you Little, Brown and Net Galley for letting read this book.
It is already out now for you to enjoy!

I bought this book not realizing I would be granted an ARC, so cross-posting my review here.

*crosses fingers this isn't the last Darktown novel.*

I loved the first two, and this one is already on the re-read list. There are so many moving and intertwined parts. I want to go over it again, but at first blush, this is a fantastic read. This could be standalone but you really should read the first two in this series for the needed background story.

This is the latest in Thomas Mullen's superb historical Darktown series set in Atlanta, Georgia, that began with the 1948 recruitment of the first black police officers. It is now 1956, a tense, brutal, violent and turbulent period in American history with the nascent civil rights movement, and the background of the Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs the Board of Education which promises to desegregate schools. In this febrile climate, whites are mobilising to fight this 'outrage', punishing any black person seeking to improve black rights. In Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jnr is leading the incendiary bus strike that has numerous forces determined to put a stop to such subversive activities by any means necessary. In Atlanta, a young black man, Randy Higgs, has been charged with the rape of a white woman. The editor of the black Atlanta Daily Times newspaper, Arthur Bishop, writes an article that contends the relationship was consensual, as can be proven by letters written by the woman, attracting white fury, vitriol and hate mail.

Tommy Smith has quit the police and is now working as a crime reporter at the black paper. Late one night he is at work trying to finish a story when he falls asleep. He is awoken by gunshots, calling the police when he discovers Bishop shot in his office, only to be treated as a suspect. This awakens Smith's cop instincts along with the search for an exclusive, as he looks for a killer. However, the deeper Smith delves into Bishop's life, the more a myriad of motives emerge. A sense of urgency develops as it becomes clear the white police force are unwilling to carry out a thorough inquiry and will settle for a obvious suspect. Lucius Boggs is still a black officer policing the black community, although he still has few powers or resources, operating from a basement at Police HQ. He and his boss, the white Sergeant Joe McInnis, strong characters in their own right, are carrying out their own separate inquiries that on occasion feed into Smith's, encountering interfering FBI agents, out of town lawmen wanting to meddle in their jurisdiction, communist activists, and private detectives.

Mullen's evocative writing makes this period of history come alive for the reader, with its impressive in depth detailed research, making this simultaneously educational and a cracking good read. His wide range of characters are central to this, they are flawed, feel authentic and show skilful development, such as McInnes, understanding his black officers and the black community so much more. McInnes now backs his officers and is willing to take on racist attitudes and officers, many of whom are Klan members, and finds himself having to think hard when he is offered the opportunity to move on from his present position. This is a wonderfully complex read, rage inducing when it comes to the issue of race, an issue that continues to play a major role today, resonating in contemporary America. I understand this is in the process of being developed into a TV series. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.

A rewarding reading experience completely immerses you in a world where you breathe the characters in it-- their thoughts, their emotions, how their lives function in the culture. Sometimes the joy comes from an escape into an imaginary world you have never dreamed of. Sometimes the experience is an enlightenment about a reality you never fully grasped before.

Thomas Mullen's Darktown series covers a terrible, shameful time in America not so very long ago. Just after World War II Atlanta hired eight black police officers as a cosmetic show for votes. These men were limited to working only the black neighborhoods, were not allowed to arrest a white person, were not issued squad cars, and for their own protection were not even allowed to step into the white police station--as that might offend the white officers, many who were Klan members.

"Midnight Atlanta" is the third in the series, set in 1956 during the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. The editor of Atlanta's black newspaper has been murdered and the black police have the task of solving the case in the face of overwhelming prejudice from their own force, the FBI, even members of their own community who have personal issues at stake.

Like the two previous books in this saga, "Midnight Atlanta" rates five stars from me. It works on a crime mystery level while it awakens you to real struggles real people had to endure at the hands of others. Hard to use the term "enjoy" here for my reading, as recent events have shown we have not progressed much at all.

Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. #MidnightAtlanta #NetGalley

"If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress... progress is healing the wound, and America hasn’t even begun to pull out the knife." -- Malcolm X

In the offices of The Daily Times, Atlanta’s premier black newspaper, Tommy Smith, former police officer turned journalist, is asleep at his desk when a gunshot jerks him awake.  He runs to find the body of the paper’s publisher, Arthur Bishop, dead on the floor.  He makes a call to his old precinct to report the murder only to find himself in the crosshairs of a few white cops looking to quickly close a case.

Shutting the book on this murder, however, will prove harder than expected.  Smith’s ex-partner Lucius Boggs and his sergeant Joe McInnis have to wade through the weeds of the FBI, a group of communist activists and a pair of suspicious private eyes looking to cover up what really happened.

Thomas Mullen’s Darktown series has been an enjoyable one.  Midnight Atlanta is no exception.  It’s been a few years since I read the first two books in the series, but there seemed to be a lot more moving parts this time around.  While the focus is the investigation into the murder of Arthur Bishop, Mullen is also juggling the transit boycott put forth by Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama, the case of a black man accused of raping his white girlfriend, the desegregation of southern schools and the red scare.

With that approach, Mullen was able to let a lot of red herrings dangle and given that any one of them was plausible, it kept me guessing right up until the end.  It also helped that many of the characters that Mullen continues to bring to life are strong, engaging and memorable, making both their motivations and reactions consistent and believable.  Like the previous two novels, the ugliness of the civil-rights era in the south continues to bleed into many of the relationships among the characters creating a strain on those still struggling to do the right thing.  You really feel the weight of oppression on the backs of these characters.

In the afterword, Mullen speaks of the extensive research that went into crafting this series and even lists many of the books and materials he used.  With this information, it feels like Mullen could be wrapping this up as a trilogy.  I have no idea if Mullen plans to continue the series, but I hope he does as there’s still plenty to work with as America continues on its brutal road to some form of racial equality.

This book is well plotted and presents a panorama of the events surrounding the Civil Rights struggle in the South. This book is especially relevant today as the United States is once again reeling with racial justice protests and the call to examine our racial history.
Complex characters stay true to themselves while developing
This was an amazing read! And I enjoyed it!

I would like to thank Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for a review copy of Midnight Atlanta, the third novel to feature Altlanta’s groundbreaking (for the South) Black police precinct, set in 1956.

Tommy Smith is no longer a police officer and has become a reporter at the Atlanta Daily Times where Black people get their news. He wakes up to hear shots and discovers his editor, Arthur Bishop shot to death in his office. The white detectives assume he is guilty, so to clear his name he has to find out what Arthur was investigating. Meanwhile Joe McInnis, the white sergeant in charge of the precinct and Smith’s ex-partner, Lucius Boggs launch their own investigation.

Midnight Atlanta is the first novel in the series that I have read, although I’ve heard good things about it and wanted to see for myself. I enjoyed it as it is a good crime novel, but I found it distressing on an emotional level.

It is difficult to disentangle the crime from the setting and the politics of the era, as the latter in some senses begat the crime. The murder of an influential black man plays out against the racism of the time and the social unrest that is beginning to manifest itself. It’s ugly on every level, from the intentional racism of a white detective to the FBI regarding demands for social justice as dangerous and harmful to the country and the balancing act that black people have perform to stay alive. It’s horrible that 65 years later the same issues are still being discussed and can be seen in this novel. I think the novel is a tour de force on the practicalities of living with racism and explained it on an everyday level that gave me a much broader understanding of racism in the American South. As I said, the inhumanity is distressing.

I loved the investigation, which I found to be compelling. Each character, Smith, Boggs and McInnis do their own investigating and each has different things to contribute, not that they are working together, nor that they share with each other until it’s almost too late. They all have strong ideas and personalities so the clashes add extra interest. I even liked the inconclusive resolution, which seems to fit the zeitgeist and preceding events in the novel.

Midnight Atlanta is a powerful, moving novel that seems to have the balance between show and tell just right, i.e. informative on the politics of the time but hammering home the actuality through action and dialogue. I have no hesitation in recommending it as a good read.

I was excited by the premise of this book but as it wore on to a rickety conclusion I admit I was almost entirely checked out. The author seems to have tried for some gotcha moments but by the time we got to a killer and a motive everything but the kitchen sink had been crammed into the story until as a reader I just felt fatigued. I appreciated that some real history is on occasion mentioned but on the whole it just seemed too much icing for an already unwieldy cake.

Darktown is a great mystery series and this third book in the series keeps up the pace of the first two books. This latest episode jumps ahead 6 years and some of the bad behavior that was beginning in the previous installment has come full force. Over the series, Mullen gives a well-researched look at life in Atlanta from 1948-1956 (so far) and each book continues same characters and adds new.

Midnight Atlanta is the third book in Thomas Mullen's excellent "Darktown" series. This one is set in 1956,6 years after the events of "Lightning Men", and while Lucius Boggs is still in the Atlanta Police Department Tommy Smith is a Journalist for Atlanta's main black newspaper. Of course wherever Smith goes trouble is not far away and he's actually asleep in his office when his boss,editor Arthur Bishop,is killed and he finds himself with some explaining to do.

It very soon becomes apparent that dark forces are at work in Atlanta with the FBI and rogue private investigators sniffing around and the racial and political tensions of the time all playing a part in the tale. Sergeant Joe McInnes, who regular readers of the series will recognise as the white cop in charge of Atlanta''s small black police department, finds himself trying to rein in Smith and Boggs while also dealing with meddling from his superiors and rival lawmen.

As well as great read Midnight Atlantic is a good historical insight into the turmoil of the mid-50s America and in particular the changes being fought for by the emerging civil rights movement. There are many quite horrifying factual examples of the total lack of justice afforded to black people, for example the black man convicted to several years in prison for looking at a white woman. The fictional tale that these examples are woven into also underlines that message..

Another fine book in the series,hopefully there will be more to come. It can be read as a standalone but you'll enjoy it more if you've read the previous 2 books .